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Dokushin Kizoku – First Impression

This one kind of reminded me of Rich Man Poor Woman
(which is my current fave jdrama, btw). Okay, I just really have to get
that off of me :3

People call him
"Noble Bachelor". He works as the president of a filmmaking company
which his father established. He possesses a high degree of creativity and
carries himself professionally at work. He's satisfied with being single.
People call him "Divorce Warrior". He is the younger brother of
"Noble Bachelor". While his divorce is being processed, his
soon-to-be ex-wife kicks him out of the house. "Divorce Warrior"
works with his older brother "Noble Bachelor". His talent lies in his
ability to negotiate and having a keen business sense. "Divorce
Warrior" is attractive and he's busy dating women. People call her
"Marriage Refugee". She dreams of writing a film script, but her love
life and work prospects look dim. She is also hates men's view of marriage.
"Marriage Refugee" isn't interested in marriage and works hard to
achieve her dream. Achieving her dream though isn't easy and she has recently
given up on her dream. Now, she does housework as a part-time job. Something
unexpected occurs. The lives of these three people cross and their lives begin
to change. [MyDramaList]

This series opened up in a very interesting manner with
those movie-like scenes showing the lives of our three main characters (MCs). The
drama wasn’t very emotional in a sense that you’ll feel for the characters
right off the bat. The comedy isn’t exactly many as well but I’m really eyeing
on each MC in here and I’m definitely getting the feeling that we’ll have those
occasional comedic lines and moments in here just how RMPW does theirs. This
is romance-comedy after all.

The synopsis clearly explained the background of each
character and I believe that this opening episode has clearly shown these
backgrounds well. While “Divorce Warrior” isn’t so interesting to me, he’s
probably more of the comedy relief (or so I’d like to believe to), “Noble
Bachelor” and “Marriage Refugee” were both pretty interesting characters. If
there’s anyone in here that I’ll consider very easy to get into, I’d say it’s “Marriage
Refugee” because her story gives off the simple I-went-to-the-city-to-achieve-my-dreams
kind of thing. What’s fancy about “Noble Bachelor,” on the other hand, is his
attitude. He’s always very professional that he’ll ignore when he has to
ignores, attends when he has to, criticizes, praise and other more things. He
could be Hyuga Toru (RMPW reference here) in here with that attitude
minus the fun and childish occasional sarcasm talk.

Also, the series having a character trying to achieve
something and such would definitely give off those occasional inspirational
moments. It’s one of my boosters in each series may it be anime, manga or
jdrama. It was already done in this episode and I’m eyeing for more of these
stuff throughout its run. It’s just a matter of presentation whether it’ll
reach its audience or not. Because in some cases, despite how sorry the
character’s state is and how much resolution he/she has, if we generally don’t
care about them or their goal, the inspirational point won’t get through. I’m
really crossing my fingers that this one will be done right and well(:

Acting is superb. I honestly don’t know so much of the actors
but I’d have to admit that their acting played a very great role in my
impression of this series as a whole. I really have to give praise to the three
MC, Kusanagi Tsuyoshi
as Hoshino Mamoru (Noble Bachelor), Ito Hideaki as Hoshino Susumu
(Divorce Warrior), and Kitagawa
Keiko as Haruno Yuki (Marriage Refugee). Both Kusanagi and Kitagawa were
both particularly great here. Kusanagi works well as a responsible, polite yet
snob-looking president of a film producing company. His drama at the latter
part of the series but his overall performance is pretty good. Kitagawa, on the
other hand, reminded me of RMPW’s Natsui Makoto. She’s not exactly the klutzy
type of character but her hopeful and easily impressed character makes me think
of Makoto. Her drama at the later part of the episode was honestly a lot more
easily felt than Kusanagi’s but I guess it mainly depended on the background of
their characters.

On a side note, the foreigner actress’s accent was quite
funny, had to pause every now and then just to laugh on that. LOL.

Overall, this series is a pretty nice well presented
romantic comedy series for this season of jdrama. It’s very enjoyable although
it honestly had a pretty slow start for me. It’s recommended for those who
enjoyed Rich Man Poor Woman which I compared this to throughout the
post(: Now let me think about writing a jdrama series weekly :3